556 [Assembly 



each, and also diflferent amounts in the aggregate as he labors or 

 stands still. It is only when animals have been long deprived 

 of some one kind of food that they may not be trusted with an 

 unlimited supply. Whenever these instincts are interfered with, 

 whenever the appetite of the animal does not succeed in effecting 

 that combination of food that is best adapted to the wants of its 

 system, (as when the food is deficient in azotized matter,) in 

 order to obtain the requisite amount of the one ingredient a 

 larger amount of the whole is taken, and the waste matter is 

 passed off undigested. It is not only a cruel but a wasteful prac- 

 tice to keep stocl^ through tlie winter on one kind of food. Any 

 one who has tried to winter horses on hay alone will bear witness 

 to the enormous amount they will consume. This then is the 

 pathology of indigestion, whether it occur with men or horses, fur 

 horses do have the dispepsia. Your ox is more grossly made, but 

 even he has it when confined to browse. This disease is nothing 

 but an incorrect adaptation of the food to the habits of living and 

 the, diarrhcea, the " scouring" that comes on is from the irritation 

 occasioned in the bowels by the surplus undigested matter. Now 

 roots, and more especially carrots, are said to not only afford their 

 own nutriment but to aid in some way in the digestion of this 

 crude surplus. However this may be it is certain that barn yard 

 fowls fare the worse where carrots are fed to horses in the propor- 

 tion of one bushel to four of oats This effect has been ascribed 

 to the pectic acids 



It is not so much then as an aliment as a condiment that roots 

 are useful feed, for we do never practically, for economical rea- 

 sons, reach a perfect combination of food. It is as much, proba- 

 bly, in promoting complete digestion as it is in furnishing nutri- 

 ment themselves that they act — that they produce that peculiar 

 change in the ordure of horses fed on them during the winter 

 assimilating it to that of summer. Water contains no nourish- 

 ment, and yet we know it to be necessary, and the argument for 

 the necessity ol root feed is of a like nature. In his extremity a 

 man will give all his substance for a draught of water, and the 

 present high price of potatoes and garden vegetables proves them 

 of like necessity without implying that they are eminently nu- 

 tritious. 



